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tv   Forensic Files  CNN  May 17, 2014 10:00pm-10:31pm PDT

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anthropologist they will find something uniquely human and they will tie him to that victim. >> mr. otto thought he was going to outsmart us and he was pretty sure of it. he was going to do anything he could to try to outsmart us but no, it didn't work. >> up next, a young woman is murdered after years of domestic abuse. >> he beat her before. he shot at her. >> but the ex-boyfriend isn't the only suspect. >> people will report the crime just to steer suspicion away from them. >> it's a crime where things aren't always what they seem. >> there were hamburger buns thrown all over the bathroom floor. even as a youngster, christina had dreams of working in the news business. >> christina wanted to be a journalist. she said mom, i cannot be a doctor for you.
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mom, i cannot be a lawyer for you. >> but her plans were stalled by an unexpected pregnancy in her senior year in high school. >> she made some bad choices with the people she associated with and the kinds of things she did for recreation including a fair amount of drug use it appears. christina dropped out of high school, had the baby and moved in with jacob hadley, the father of her child. unfortunately that didn't appear to work out either. >> jacob regularly knocked her around. she was seen with bruises and was very open about it. somebody would ask her where she got that bruise and she'd say oh, jacob beat me. >> no matter what, how he treated her, she just cannot be apart from jacob. i don't know why. i asked her can you leave him no, mom. i can't. i love him very much. >> in 1999 jacob shot christina
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in the face with a fepellet gun and spent three day behind bars. >> she actually had a diary and her struggles to start out fresh and make a good life for her and her young son. >> he criticizes me. he puts me down and physically abuses me. after three years i was starting to realize that i was the only one in love. finally krift evchristina and t move out into an compartment a few miles away. four days after christina moved, one of her friends stopped by to see how she was doing. he rang the bell but there was no answer. the door was locked. when he looked through a screened window, he saw christina's 2-year-old son alone and crying. >> he thought he heard the child
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say mommy is dead. that prompted him into action. he removed the screen, climbed inside and found christina semi clothed, face down, in a bathtub full of water. he rushed outside and asked the next door neighbor to call 911. >> 911. >> i would like to report a death, i would like to report a death. i got there. she was dead. i don't know. my neighbor. >> christina was pronounced dead at the scene. >> the child possibly witnessed his own mother's murder. that's horrifying to me. >> investigators found evidence that the initial attack took place in the kitchen. the victim's sandals were found squarely in the middle of the kitchen. it was almost as though she was struck with such force that it knocked her right out of her sandals. >> our crime seen investigators found a metal collar that could
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have been belonged on a flying pan handle. >> she was hit with such force that it knocked her teeth out. >> christina had been stabbed to death with a knife but no knife was found at the scene. >> at first, i got mad at god. why he let her die this way? why did you take her away from me this way? to investigators, it was clear the killer had tried to hide his tracks while cleaning up, however, he tracked the bloody footprints all over the bathroom floor into the kitchen and back. it was a curious thing why he was barefoot. we just really weren't sure. >> there was something else extremely unusual in the bath room. there were hamburger buns thrown all over the bathroom floor. it looked like a bag of hamburger buns had been opened and tossed around. >> but they couldn't find the
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wrapper anywhere in the apartment. >> you have to wonder what goes through a person's mind that kills someone and then leaves a child behind to sit there in that bloody crime scene? >> christine's ex-boir friend was the prime suspect. >> jacob certainly had motive. shed separated. they had a rocky past. >> everybody thought in my family thought that jacob did it. honestly, the off-season isn't i've got a lot to do. that's why i got my surface. it's great for watching game film and drawing up plays. it's got onenote, so i can stay on top of my to-do list, which has been absolutely absurd since the big game. with skype, it's just really easy to stay in touch with the kids i work with. alright, russell you are good to go! alright, fellas. alright, russ. back to work! and i get a lot in return with ink plus from chase i make a lot of purchases for my business. like 60,000 bonus points
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the crime scene showed signs that christina knew her killer. there was no forced entry and nothing was stolen. >> it could have been about drugs. it could have been about rejecti rejection. it could have been about anything. but it wasn't robbery. >> at the autopsy, the medical examiner found evidence christina had been sexually assaulted. >> her throat had been cut. the autopsy revealed that her trakia had been totally severed. >> when a knife is used on a victim, that's very much an up close and personal -- >> there was no toxicologiy screening test done on christina
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and that was because the doctor could not get any blood. >> an x-ray showed a metal pellet lodged in her face. a reminder of when her boyfriend shot her with a pullet gun 8 months later. >> the most dangerous time is when the victim tries to make a clean break from her abuser. she had just done this. she moved away. >> investigators interrogated christine's ex-boyfriend jacob. >> he said on the night of the murder he was a half hour away. >> jake produced two very credible witnesses to testify that he had been drinking with him. as a matter of fact they were members of the university of iowa's team. >> not all of jacob's team could be accounted for.
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>> the evidence at the crime scene indicated the perpetrator was probably someone christina knew. other evidence suggested it was someone who lived close by. for example, the killer wasn't wearing shoes. >> when of a bare shoot print in blood, it's obviously someone that's close to the scene whether it's someone that lives in the residents or someone close by. people generally don't run around barefoot as a matter of course. >> and inside the bathroom, investigators found a possible explanation for why the hamburger buns were there. >> they found the clip to the hamburger buns on the floor in the bathroom so it appears that the hamburger buns had been opened in the bathroom. >> but they never found the bag that the hamburger buns came in. >> we sermize that the killer may have used the wrapper to
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wrap the knife in so as he carried the knife out of the apartment it wouldn't drip blood anywhere. >> this is another clue that the killer lived near by. not only did he have bare feet but he was concerned about leaving a blood trail, possibly one leading straight to his door. this pointed towards two men who didn't previously been thought of as suspects. the man who claimed he found christina's body. 32-year-old todd hail and christina's next door neighbor carlos robinson who called 911. both men knew one another since they both helped christina move into her apartment three days earlier. investigators had been suspicious of todd hale's claim that he had been able to enter christina's apartment through a small window opening without disturbing the items on the entertainment certainty inside. >> we thought for todd to get in through that window he would
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have to have an acrobats physique which he did not. >> he wasn't invited in. he opened the window, removed the screen and snaked himself in through this small opening. >> so they asked him to do it again while they watched. >> we allowed him to demonstrate how he was able to climb through that window and around the entertainment center and he was able to do that even wearing some steel toed work boots. hale got inside again without touching any of the item on the entertainment certainty. >> it was a little bit amazing watching him to do that. it was like watching a burglar in action. >> next, police asked christin christina's neighbor carlos robinson to provide a routine statement and he willingly complied. >> investigators described him as being very helpful and
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robinson to provide a routine
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. investigators had three suspects in the murder of christina, her ex-boyfriend
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jacob hadley who had previous arrests for physical violence against christina, he shot at her. he's beat her several times. >> the other two include the man who found christina's body and christina's neighbor who called 911. >> sometime people will report the crime just to steer suspicion away from them. >> investigators were found to find some footprints at the scene. >> you can't see the way the prints really with the naked eye unless you're really looking. i'm sure that the suspect never realized that he had left so many prints behind in his haze to collect the physical evidence that he thought might be damming. >> these prints which contain ridged detail can be identified as belonging to a specific person as a fingerprint would.
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>> so jacob hadley, todd, and the neighbor were asked to identify their prints. >> we brought them down to the identification bureau and took footprints of all three of them. >> todd hale's footprints didn't match. jacob hadley's foot prints didn't match either. >> and then there's carlos. i inked his feet and asked him to step down on the paper and he was reluctant to do that. >> carlos walked down one side of the paper and walked over the footprints he just made. >> something wasn't right here. it wasn't hard instructions to follow. it was like he was trying to obliterate his footprints. >> finally technicians got usable prints. they were compared to the bloody footprints in christina's
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bathroom. >> this is our guy. it is his footprint. carlos's palm sprint was also a perfect match to the bloody palm print on christina's bathroom sink. >> carlos's dna matched the dna from christina's rape kit. >> when faced with this evidence carlos made a startling confession. >> he now claimed he had had a sexual relationship with christina in the couple of days he had known her. he also claimed he found christina's body several hours before todd hail did but said he got scared and ran hole instead of calling police. >> he insisted, however, he wasn't the killer. >> his story for not calling 911 was that he was a blackmon and he was scared he would be framed for the murder. >> the medical examiner
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estimated that christina was estimated between 9 a.m. and 3:00 a.m. >> carlos's mom was gone on the night this murder occurred. >> investigators needed proof that carlos robinson was the killer after all and not just a neighbor who found her body and hadn't reported the crime. >> people often look for somebody that has a motive and what we were trying to prove to the jury that a person who barely knew the victim for four days had killed her and that the ex-boyfriend who was abusive to her didn't. >> then investigators discovered either another piece of evidence or a complication. in looking at the crime scene evidence, scientists noticed something in the hamburger buns.
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one of them was misshaped. >> we did use some light oblique angles and ultraviolent night. this was also used when we took photographs of the bun. >> the indentition strongly resembled the right toe, the ball of a foot and bits the second and third toes. it looked like there were ridge detailed in the soft bread that resembled prints. >> if these were footprints that matched carlos robinson prosecutors had an open and shut case. >> our suspect dumped the buns on the floor and used the plastic bag to carry out the knife. the buns were fresh and the barefoot person had also stepped in these hamburger buns. >> if if they weren't robinson's prints. then it raised the possibility of reasonable doubt or the possibility that robinson had an accomplice. >> so it was almost like we had
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investigators assigned to christin christina's murder fountain unusual piece of evidence at the
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crime scene. they had what looked like a footprint in a hamburger bun next to christine's body. investigators believe it was made by the killer as he fled the scene. in order to verify their work, iowa investigators took the bun and photographs to gene zarnicky, a certified print examiner at the d.c. crime lab in iowa. she not only confirmed this was a right foot in the soft bread but found enough clean ridge detail to convince him that it was the footprint of carlos robinson. >> i think if the bun was in a dry or stale condition, the print may have been not been reproduced. we were quite fortunate in that the bun appears to be fresh when he stepped on it. >> this proved that the only evidence at the crime scene was carlos robinson's.
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>> investigators believed christina was a victim of her own trusting nature. >> carlos was her neighbor. they had already bet. when he knocked on her door, she let him in. >> carlos wasn't wearing any shoes since he lived next door. once inside, prosecutors believe he made a sexual advance which christina turned down. so carlos hit christina with tremendous force knocking out three of her teeth. he then dragged her to the bathroom where he sexually assaulted her and killed her with a knife. he filled the tub with water in an attempt to watch away
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evidence but he grabbed the sink when he tried to get help leaving behind a perfect palm print. he needed to get rid of the murder weapon so he went to the kitchen tracking his bloody footprints. he grabbed a bag of hamburger buns dumped them on the floor and on his way out he stepped on one of the buns, leaving the one piece of forensic evidence he couldn't refute. robinson murdered christina with her child inside the house. >> that little child was in that house for up to 24 hours we estimate with his dead mother in the bathtub. >> i am calling him a monster and i never forgive him. even when i die -- till the die i die i am not going to forgive
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him ever. >> prosecutors believe carlos was afraid his wife would end their marriage when he found out he had made a sexual advance toward christina. that's why he decided to murder her. >> robinson was charged with first degree murder. >> mr. robinson i would advise you with respect to the charge. you have the right to have an attorney and have the attorney represent you at all stages of the proceeding. >> robinson was convicted of christina's murder and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. >> there's certainly a feeling of the victim getting some justice but at the end of the day, you still have a 20-year-old single mother that died for no reason other than someone else's violence. that's sad. >> i believe that other people -- parents have children that got killed and murdered and
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move on with theirly. me, i don't know. i can't. i cannot go work outside. it hurts me. it hits me all the time that i miss christina so bad. up next, a woman goes missing. >> an obvious possibility was an abduction. >> police find hints of a secret life inside the victim's computer. >> the internet opens up a whole new superhigh way of suspects. >> and deserving evidence in an unexpected loc. >> something had happened in that basement. >> they almost looked like chain saw marks. >> scientists provide answers that no one wants to accept. >> when they introduce you to the chaplain, you knew the news you're going to receive is not good. it wafe

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